James Joyce Quotes
"Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why."
- James Joyce
(Related: English, Public, Reading, Reason, Writing)
"Nations have their ego, just like individuals."
- James Joyce
(Related: Ego, Nations)
"Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality."
- James Joyce
(Related: Poetry, Sense)
"Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment."
- James Joyce
(Related: Romantic, Satan, Youth)
"Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance."
- James Joyce
(Related: Balance, Hunting, Shakespeare)
"The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts."
- James Joyce
(Related: Men, Thoughts, Actions)
"No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination."
- James Joyce
(Related: Time, Pen, Quiet)
"The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works."
- James Joyce
(Related: Life, Reading)
"The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you."
- James Joyce
(Related: Men, Now)
"There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being."
- James Joyce
(Related: Church, Being, Heresy, Philosophy)
"Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home."
- James Joyce
(Related: Home)
"Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk."
- James Joyce
"My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire."
- James Joyce
(Related: Words)
"When I die Dublin will be written in my heart."
- James Joyce
(Related: Heart, Will)
"Ireland sober is Ireland stiff."
- James Joyce
(Related: Ireland)
"You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman."
- James Joyce
(Related: Forget, Heaven, Woman)
"Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead."
- James Joyce
(Related: Obvious)
"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not."
- James Joyce
(Related: Love, Mother, World)
"Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age."
- James Joyce
(Related: Age, Glory, Passion, World)
"A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk."
- James Joyce
"A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."
- James Joyce
(Related: Genius, Discovery, Errors, Man, Mistakes)
"A man's errors are his portals of discovery."
- James Joyce
(Related: Discovery, Errors, Man)
"Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse."
- James Joyce
(Related: Friendship, Love, Man, Woman)
"And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes."
- James Joyce
(Related: Heart, Eyes, Will)
"My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions."
- James Joyce
(Related: Soul)
"Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America."
- James Joyce
(Related: America, Columbus, Posterity)
"He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible."
- James Joyce
(Related: World)
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."
- James Joyce
(Related: Discovery, Mistakes)
"I fear those big words which make us so unhappy."
- James Joyce
(Related: Fear, Words)
"I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction."
- James Joyce
(Related: Legal, Age, Mother, Father, Fiction, Name, Will)
"I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."
- James Joyce
(Related: Immortality, Will)
"If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European."
- James Joyce
(Related: First, Ireland)
"Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow."
- James Joyce
(Related: Ireland, Old)
"Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize."
- James Joyce
(Related: Art, Pleasure, Schools)
"Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion."
- James Joyce
(Related: Men, Emotion, Intellect)
"I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day."
- James Joyce
(Related: Day, Future, Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday)
"A nation is the same people living in the same place."
- James Joyce
(Related: People, Living, Nation)